I'm Never Falling In Love Again
by Irony12
Summary: All it takes is one little mistake and someone gets hurt. A modern Emma.
1. Prologue: Here Comes the Bride

_This will be my first posted story. Normally I don't do chapters; I'm a short-story (preferably flash-fiction) kind of girl. But I have a rather obnoxious best friend (Marshie12) that coerced me into writing this story under pain of death. _

_So I guess it's kind of like a companion piece to her story, "Love is a Four Letter Word." Some of her characters will make cameos in my story. (Which proves to be tricky considering that the time scale of our two stories is really different and my characters speak with her characters about certain aspects of her plot that she's not even close to getting to… and so I may reveal secrets to her stories.) And it very roughly follows the whole divorce/cheating spouse part of her story, though our characters deal with the circumstances in a completely different way. As well they should._

_And I've forgotten to mention that this is an Emma fic. Well now you know.

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_**I'm Never Falling In Love Again**_

_Prologue: Here Comes the Bride_

I had never been one to panic.

In fact, I'd like to think I'd lived my twenty-two years of life quite rationally. And yet here I sat, brown paper bag clutched firmly in my left hand, engagement right hanging loosely in my right.

Oh god! Please don't let me start crying! They'd only just finished my makeup and it just wouldn't do to have mascara streaming down my face. Oh, but how the tears were threatening to fall.

"Chloe," my significantly older sister breathed anxiously, shifting nervously from foot to foot in front of me and holding a small garbage can at the ready in case I had the urge to vomit again. "Do you want me to go get Jack?"

"No!" I gasped, trying to regain my breath. I reached out to grab her arm and make sure that she didn't go get him. Lily completely misinterpreted my attempt, grabbing my head and forcing it over the garbage can in order to redirect what she had only assumed to be my lunch making a second appearance. I grabbed the bucket from her and tossed it away.

I shifted my suffocating white dress and stood up, beginning to pace across the lovely room in which the happy bride was to prepare… or rather in my case: panic. I hated that the only person I had here to offer me any kind of guidance was my ninny of a sister. Lily is eleven years my senior. Outside of my birthday and the fact that she taught me how to tie my shoes when I was three, we never had one of those sisterly-relationships.

And yet here she was: my maid of honor and my only hope for sanity. Needless to say, she wasn't doing a very good job. She suddenly began to flail about, flapping her arms as if she were moments away from taking flight. Out of the two of us, I didn't know which one seemed more likely to cry.

I quickly passed her my brown paper bag. She took three deep breaths and passed it back. I took four and shoved it right back at her. We continued as such for at least four minutes.

I didn't know why I was in such hysterics. I mean it's my wedding day for god's sake! I should be a glowing little bride, perhaps a bit jittery, but overall eerily calm and collected. Instead I was pretty sure I would retch again at any moment.

Oh god, I needed Jack.

But this wasn't supposed to be about Jack. This wasn't Jack's fault. This whole thing had nothing to do with Jack. So why couldn't I stop thinking about him?

It was only because I craved his wisdom and guidance. Nothing more. I repeated such a mantra multiple times in my head, hoping that perhaps it would come true if I believed it enough. Jack was busy. Jack had his own groomsmen/waiting at the end of the aisle affairs to worry about. The last thing Jack needed was to have to soothe a hysteric bride.

I could handle this.

I grabbed the discarded trash can and barely made it before what appeared to be my light breakfast saw the light of day from a whole new perspective than what was strictly normal. This was _so_ not good.

Lily began to panic again. I sobbed heaving wails over my garbage can.

"What should I do?" Lily begged with me, pleading for advice. Just like me, Lily wasn't the most intuitive of beings. She didn't know what to do, what to say, to help calm me down. I couldn't hold that against her. On her wedding day I'd broken our grandmother's string of pearls trying to fasten them around her neck. She'd cried right then and there while I'd sat there blankly and thanked god that she'd remembered to wear waterproof mascara. Why hadn't I been that smart?

"Knock, knock."

Lily and I simultaneously looked at the door, hoping it was some sort of saving grace and not the obnoxious priest coming to make sure, for the nine billionth time, that the bride and groom didn't want to personalize their vows.

We both breathed a simultaneous sigh of relief. Sure it wasn't Jack, coming to quell my fears, tell me that everything was going to be all right, love conquers all, and possibly one of Aesop's fables with a moral about happy endings. Now that I think about it, I was surprised Jack hadn't come to do so already. It wasn't like him to pass-up the opportunity to be the hero of the day. _But he's busy_, I had to remind myself again. He's my best friend in the entire world, has been with me through thick and thin, and knows me better than anyone else on the planet earth. The least I can do is get through a single day without his assistance. Sure, it's only the most important day of my life, but hey, who's counting?

"Twinkie?" my daddy asked, looking at me as I lay curled up around my smelly garbage can, looking back up at him with mascara raccoon eyes. "What happened to you?"

It was enough to make me start crying again. This did nothing to help pacify the situation.

"Should I go get Jack?" my dad asked Lily. I knew by her silence that she'd merely shrugged in reply. Lily always shrugged. Shrugging for Lily was like breathing for normal people, like telling stories was for Jack.

"Please don't," my strangled voice replied, muffled as I buried my head in my arms.

"Then what should I do, Twinkie?" he asked me imploringly, dolefully.

I looked back up at him. "Hold me, tell me everything is going to be alright, and make me look pretty again."

Dad leaned over and whispered audibly in Lily's ear, "Is it normal for her to be freaking out like this?"

Lily merely shrugged. In this case I knew that that shrug actually meant no, but I chose to ignore it.

Dad took a deep breath, commanded Lily to do something with my makeup so I looked less like a heroine addict, and came to sit beside me. He wasn't holding me necessarily, but he rested his hand complacently on my shoulder. In my dad's world this was as intimate as it got, and I genuinely appreciated the closeness.

"What kind of story would you like for me to tell you?" he asked me softly, while Lily rooted around in her makeup bag, looking for a miracle but only finding concealer. I sat up so she could begin to rescue the Picasso that had become my face, holding back tears. My dad groped around the room, hoping to find something he could read to me that would be within reaching distance. He found a newspaper. The lifestyle section. For some odd reason he began to read from the obituaries. It did not, like I assume he'd thought, put my life in perspective.

It took all my reserve and self-respect not to cry all over Lily again as she smothered my distressing appearance in a layer of caked-on makeup.

I sat there, on the floor of my dressing room, with my father's hand resting icily on my shoulder; my sister's shaking hands stabbing me repeatedly in the eye as she tried to re-apply eye shadow; and the tale of Marcus Ellivarious, who'd recently "passed gently away leaving behind his loving wife, Marge, of 32 years, two sons, Jacob and Robert, and a spacious three bedroom apartment off Kings street."

But it was enough just to know that they were there for me. Eventually I managed to stand, ignoring Lily's quick fret about the crinkles in my white puffy gown, and hold my head in what appeared to be a dignified manner, ignoring the weird throbbing sensation in my chest.

I used my father as support, letting the old man all but carry me down the aisle, and lead me right to the altar and the waiting embrace of my precious beau. I looked over at Jack; he was staring quite decidedly at his feet. For some reason, that made me blush.

"We are gathered here today," toned the rather obnoxious priest, (I wondered fleetingly why he hadn't taken my earlier advice and "shoved those damn vows up his ass." It almost made me laugh, which in turn almost made me start crying again.) "to join this couple in Holy Matrimony."

There was a sickening burning sensation rising in my throat. I hoped like crazy it wasn't more bile. I didn't see how it was possible that it was. I'd emptied my stomach twice-over. There couldn't possibly be anything left. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Lily, with her fingers crossed and her eyes shut in silent prayer that I didn't puke all over the minister, as that vile man continued to ramble on and on about "a commitment not to be taken lightly." Oh what did he know? That damn man wasn't even allowed to have sex, yet alone get hitched.

"Does anyone object to this union?" he asked the room crowded with well-wishers and people that were merely waiting in anticipation for the open bar to begin.

I looked over at Jack as he cleared his throat and loosened his tie. When he removed his hand, the tie was crooked and I found I had to resist the urge to reach over and straighten it for him. I had to remind myself that that would be highly inappropriate.

"…Take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, till death do you part?"

I choked. This was my part. I inhaled a single deep soothing breath, wishing I still had my brown paper bag. "I do." I let the words slip out along with all the air from my lungs.

The obnoxious priest nodded and smiled, then turned to my future husband. "And you Thomas Greene, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, till death do you part?"

Tommy's eyes were burning into me and I forced myself to hold his gaze, despite the fact that the burning sensation in my chest had increased ten-fold. Tommy smiled genuinely. My chest constricted even tighter. "I do," he said with one of those brilliant smiles.

The priest, too, smiled. I looked around. Everyone except our two person—best man and maid of honor alike—wedding party, and my father, was smiling. Wait. Was I? I couldn't even tell.

"Then you may kiss the bride," the priest commissioned.

And so he did. As I pulled away I saw Lily looking rather puce and Jack still examining his shoes in a highly interested manner, with a decidedly blank expression, while the rest of the crowd cheered their congratulations. Finally Jack looked up and those big brown eyes were darker than the deepest shade of black, darker than I'd ever seen them before in our ten years of friendship. Lily gave him her customary with that a tight, sad smiled pressed against his lips.

"I will love you forever," Tommy whispered in my ear, nuzzling my neck with the affection of a true newlywed and with a final sinking feeling the burning sensation in my chest slipped slowly away.


	2. I Will Love You Forever

_**I'm Never Falling In Love Again**_

_Chapter 1: I Will Love You Forever_

_Five years later._

"Happy birthday!"

I heaved a great sob. In the history of the world there had been sobs, but this was the greatest of them all. This was the Armageddon of sobs.

Jack's face fell. The flowers he held in his left hand were dropped pathetically to his side, the small cake he had in his right, wobbled precariously on his arm. "What's wrong?" he asked me immediately, his face no longer in a brilliant congratulatory smile.

I swung open the door and allowed him to enter, then held my hands balled into fists in front of my mouth. I had been crying solidly for the past hour and I couldn't even tell if I still was.

Jack came into my apartment, lay the cake down gently on the first table he came across, which stood adjacent to the door, and tossed the flowers right there beside it. He didn't even take off his jacket before he'd pulled me intuitively into his arms.

"Don't you think you're overreacting a bit?" he asked me softly. I could almost hear him smiling, unable to physically see him because I'd shoved my face tightly against his body and he held me there, his chin resting comfortably on the top of my head. "It's only a birthday. Twenty-seven isn't that old, Chlo."

I cried harder. Unable to correct him. I took a deep breath, trying to regain control on my tears and the phlegm that was seeping rapidly out of my nose and onto his red cashmere sweater.

Suddenly, I felt his body stiffen and he pulled back, grabbing my arms down on either side of my shoulders and forcing me away from him until we were half an arm's length apart. He stared at me intently, looking into my eyes and using his natural ability to read my every thought. All it had taken was a shaking snort and a bit of snot on his favorite sweater for him to know that something was very much not right.

Or possibly it was that he'd noticed the pink lacy thong I still had clutched tightly in my hand.

His eyes darkened, not black, but no longer his customary mushy brown. "What did he do to you?" he asked me stiffly, rage already rolling off him despite the fact that the fiend in question was nowhere in sight.

I held out the thong, letting it dangle from my index finger, hanging between the two of us like a sprig of mistletoe. "Guess," I sobbed, squeezing my eyes shut, unable to bear the sight of the offending object any longer. "I'll even give you a clue: It's not mine."

My eyes remained closed, but even without looking I knew exactly what Jack's face would look like. His face would be tight, his jaw clenched tightly, and his eyes soft and wide in shock. I'd known Jack since I was a baby. I knew his face almost as well as my own. I could even tell that his left eyebrow would be slightly higher than the right one; that was his biggest tick. It told me that he was stressed. I slowly opened my eyes to confirm, more tears leaked out as I did so, and I immediately recognized this almost minute quirk.

Jack's hands continued to grasp my shoulders with the bitter intensity of a Kate Nash song, and his eyes focused on the pair of panties swinging threateningly in the air. I pulled them down as if plucking an orange off a tree, and balled them up angrily in my fist.

"Do you know whose they are?" he asked me, shooting a cursory glance at the hand that held the panties and then locking into my eyes, once again reading me like Jodi Picoult novel, looking for answers in my broken soul.

I didn't bother to answer; he could see in my forgotten expression that I hadn't a clue. I pulled out of his tightening grip, forcing myself away from his worried touch. I stumbled, hazarding my way to my home stereo and searching precisely through my well-organized CD collection to the song of solace for the evening. I quickly shoved my old Sara Bareilles album into the slot and jabbed the search button angrily until I got to track six.

I listened intently to her tale of tortured princesses and the forgotten parts of the stories.

_Cinderella's on her bedroom floor  
She's got a crush on the guy at the liquor store  
Cause Mr. Charming don't come home anymore  
And she forgets why she came here_

"Fairytale." She's right. They're fiction.

I turned to Jack, whirling from the CD player as if it had burned me. "Do you know the name of this album?"

Jack shook his head slowly. I'd made Jack listen to more than his fair share of records. Unlike me, he could hardly distinguish one from the next, finding his refuge in words; no matter how many times I'd asked him why lyrics couldn't qualify as words.

"'Careful Confessions.' It's brilliant from a poetic point of view. You have the alliteration, what poet doesn't love alliteration? Then you almost have this entire story behind it. It's like Ernest Hemingway flash-fiction."

"For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn," he murmured quietly under his breath, not wanting to interrupt what could only be a raging monologue. He really needn't have said it. He'd only quoted the damn story to me a million times since he was twelve and nowadays it only hit closer to home. But I'd forgive him because I knew it was his favorite.

"Yeah well, the same way you're left there wondering what the hell happened to that baby, that's how you get to feel about this girl, Sara. Why the hell is she so careful that she can't bare her soul? And then you hear this song," I gestured to the CD player as it continued to belt its bitter anthem, "and you know it's because she's been hurt." I took a deep breath, Jack merely watched me as my rattling wound to a screeching halt.

_Worry 'bout the maiden though you know  
She's only waiting spent the whole life being graded on  
the sanctity of patience and a dumb appreciation  
But the story needs some mending and a better happy ending  
Cause I don't want the next best thing  
No, no I don't want the next best thing_

We listened, standing there in silence, waiting for the song to end. Jack took a step closer to me. "I think she has every right to be careful then," he said softly. "Sometimes you shouldn't make a confession if you know someone will get hurt in the matter."

"What do you know about being hurt?" I snorted with absolutely no trace of humor. His eyes softened in repressed and baffling pain. I snapped my neck to the left and looked away, unable to bear to look at him at the moment. The way the alien pain crept across his face only served to remind me of Tommy. It was the same face Tommy made every time I wriggled away from his touch, or hesitated before I replied to his sweet nothings.

"Does, does Tommy know that you know?" he asked me suddenly, either changing the subject or getting back to it. I couldn't remember. What were we even talking about?

I sighed. There were so many emotions coursing through my body that I couldn't have labeled a single one of them even if I'd tried. I only registered a minor moment of confusion, before it too fell into the swooping sea of sentiment. Had Jack just stuttered? I think that was a first. Even as a child Jack had been the most eloquent of beings, never hesitating over his precious words.

I pointed to the door on the other side of our—or was it just mine now?—sitting room. "Go see for yourself," I said, practically spitting at the accursed door. Every time I saw it, all I visualized was my husband and a faceless chit tumbling around on my Egyptian cotton sheets.

Jack too stared at the door, staring at it with dumbfounded wonder and his two dark eyebrows pushed closely together. "Chloe?" he asked me slowly, still watching the door intently, "he's not still in there is he?"

I rolled my eyes. I could only have expected such a reaction. "Of course he is," I replied obviously. Wasn't the chair shoved blandly under the door handle clue enough? "What did you think? I'd let him out?"

Jack looked back at me. "Is she in there too?" he asked me slowly, cautiously.

"What? Do you think I'm crazy?" I replied in exasperation. He made a gesture to suggest as much. I wiped my sticky, salty cheeks. "Of course _she's_ not in there," I bit. "I found the underwear in the sofa. He says they're from Friday. Apparently it happened while I was in New York last week." _Like that makes it any better_, I wanted to add.

Oh shit. I was crying again. It hardly occurred to me to care.

"So what's he doing in there?" Jack asked, looking at the door with mild curiosity.

I glared at him. He seemed far too interested in Tommy's whereabouts and situation. Sure Tommy had been his roommate in college and he'd been Tommy's best man at the wedding, but he was my friend first. He wasn't allowed to take Tommy's side. "He's supposed to be packing," I grunted, my eyes heavy with even more tears. I was losing Tommy in this whole ordeal; I could not handle losing Jack as well.

Jack looked back at me, suddenly amused. Sure he hardly bothered to show it, but I could perceive a slightly derisive quirk to his lips. "You're mad that I care," he pointed out, reading my mind and mocking it.

"I'm a lot of things right now," I replied, grinding my jaw. "You shouldn't mock a woman in distress."

Jack nodded once. "It will never happen again," he apologized genuinely, quickly losing the quirk of his lips, but raising that left eyebrow ever so slightly once again. He was stressed? Or was he just torn between his two best friends? "Would you hate me forever if I go talk to him?"

I stared at him, my mouth slightly agape. I couldn't believe him! He was going to side with Tommy. Tommy who'd broken my heart a million times over!

"I'm not going to take his side," Jack suddenly protested. Jack had always had a knack for saying the right things at all the right times. "I was your friend first, nothing could change that."

I sighed in relief. _Great_ relief. As long as I had Jack I'd be okay. As long as he was on my side, I'd be able to survive.

"Then why do you want to go in there?" I asked, my jaw chattering slightly, biting my lip to hold it still.

"I just want to make sure he hasn't jumped out of the window," he said. "That way, I can push him out of it."

We both smiled slightly, in evil satisfaction.

"Okay. You can go in."

Jack went to the door and tugged at the chair from all angles, trying to dislodge it from under the door handle. I wouldn't have been surprised if he wasn't able. I'd jammed it up there with all my might.

He finally managed to shake it loose and tug it out with a great squeal of wood against the wood paneled floor. I winced, hoping he didn't gash the floor.

"Don't actually kill him though, Jack," I sighed begrudgingly before he could actually open the door.

Jack smiled pathetically, but still reassuringly, and nodded. And in the span of time between when he'd opened the door and when he'd closed it, I managed to catch these words from my husband: "Jack! You have to tell her to forgive me!"

Oh happy birthday to me!


End file.
